


The Shape of an Angel, or, the Crunch of Snow Under Booted Feet

by vojir



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angels, Gen, One-Shot, Snow, Wings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-07
Updated: 2012-12-13
Packaged: 2017-11-20 12:21:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/585361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vojir/pseuds/vojir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel isn't really good at many human things. This may be one of the things he's actually exceptional at.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Castiel couldn’t remember the first time it had snowed. It was thousands of years ago, in days when the Earth was shiny and new and beautiful and God was as loving a father as any angel could ask for. In those days the snow shown slick and white, covering the ground with a frosty layer of ice. In those days there was no yellow snow, and no sarcastic Dean tossing hastily crafted wads of the stuff at Castiel.

But there was a certain beauty in the filth of the present. A familiarity. A comfort, where previously there had only been dispassionate (and perhaps even a little begrudging) love. Angels have reason to be jealous of humans, after all. So maybe that’s why, standing here in this human body, knee-deep in crunchy-dirty snow, still Castiel is happy.

After Dean had bored himself with snowballs, he decided to introduce to Cas the childhood-nostalgia of snow angels. Dean thought it would be funny. So did Sam, perhaps, though he showed it in a different way. But when Castiel looked down at his creation, and then at Sam and Dean’s faces, they weren’t amused.

“Holy shit, Cas,” Dean said, his breath puffing into the cold air. Sam shook his head in silent agreement.

Castiel hadn’t bothered to use his arms to create the pitiful appendages that Sam and Dean referred to as the wings of the angel. He knew what angel wings looked like, and they were not blocky and clumsy. They were large and frightening and they were beautiful.

So he had imprinted the shape of his own wings in the snow, and they stretched beside the solemn form of his body. Outlined with flecks of gravel and dirt, a tattered angel stared up from the ground.

“I think I am the best at making snow angels,” Castiel said soberly.


	2. Until the End of Days (and Forever)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean Winchester. Man, what a good character.

Dean Winchester, while his own person, is a man shaped by those around him. By his brother, and his father’s orders. By his guardian angel. By his trust and his fear, his anger and his disappointment. He is a man broken, with beautiful eyes but an empty soul.

Those around him can feel it, this sucked-in-breath, tense-shouldered aura. He exudes a casual air of having given up. Like a zombie with a sawed-off shotgun, firing rounds of salt into thin air and breathing dusty basement dirt alongside his equally shattered brother.

And perhaps the most heartbreaking aspect of Dean Winchester is that of his fate. Of the path laid before him, that he can see but cannot change. Because the glimpse of the future he caught that day when it rained and Castiel called and he laughed for the last time in a long while? That wasn’t the future. It was a possibility. One of many. But the true future had already been decided, by the forces that sent Castiel and the forces that guided the hearts of John and Mary Winchester.

Dean is the protector. He is the older brother. He is broken, and yet he continues. Until the end of world, and beyond.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> turning this into a vignette collection. apologies.

**Author's Note:**

> aauuuggghhh i can only write really short things IM SORRY i am good at one-shots and not much else


End file.
